


A History of Partings

by LuckyDiceKirby



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, epistolary-ish, gotta run the fluff to angst gamut, peak self-indulgence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 08:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11870901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyDiceKirby/pseuds/LuckyDiceKirby
Summary: It's an odd sort of selfishness that prompts me to write down this story, the story of you and I, instead of any other. I could record the history of the Grand Tour, for I certainly lived through enough of it. I could record how the church has operated in all the many places I have lived. I could even record a travelogue, for I have journeyed farther than most. But instead, the facts I wish to put down, in all the long and empty nights that stretch before me, are the facts of us: our meetings and our partings, the affection and the vitriol that we shared, the small things that history tends to skip over, like a tide washing away designs carved into sand. A vibrant and aching history, one which has overtaken such a great portion of my life.





	A History of Partings

**Author's Note:**

> i don't think i've ever dragged myself as effectively as i have with this story
> 
> my greatest hope is that eventually we learn enough about Arrell and Alyosha's back story to joss this entire fic, austin walker please take pity on us

I have lived a strange life. I am sure you would scoff to hear me say that, dearest Tutor; you who have lived a much longer and stranger life than I. But it is true. I grew up in the shadow of the Grand Tour. I have lived my life in the light of His church, even as at times it has flickered. I watched as His sun left us, and I may soon watch as it returns. We all live strange lives, each one leading us down an unknowable path.

And I have loved you, Tutor. I am sure you would not disagree that has certainly added a great deal of strangeness to my life.

It's an odd sort of selfishness that prompts me to write down this story, the story of you and I, instead of any other. I could record the history of the Grand Tour, for I certainly lived through enough of it. I could record how the church has operated in all the many places I have lived. I could even record a travelogue, for I have journeyed farther than most. But instead, the facts I wish to put down, in all the long and empty nights that stretch before me, are the facts of us: our meetings and our partings, the affection and the vitriol that we shared, the small things that history tends to skip over, like a tide washing away designs carved into sand. A vibrant and aching history, one which has overtaken such a great portion of my life.

You may only care about history in the abstract, Tutor, but I believe that we should not remember the past only in broad sweeps of action. History is also a shared glass of wine between lovers, an academic argument winding its way to a slow conclusion throughout a week, a lingering look on a moonlit hill. There is much of my life that I hope will be remembered. The part that I am most afraid of being forgotten is you. 

And it seems that even though I do not write you letters as regularly as I once did, I still cannot let my mind wander without my fingers itching for quill and paper. For years you were beside me, and of an evening I would turn my head to tell you my stray thoughts, and for years more you were only weeks away by letter, and I wrote myself sore in our correspondence. But now for the first time we are truly parted. And still I will write myself sore, in this small and specific and quiet history. 

Perhaps I will have it bound, as you once did with your own manuscripts. What a mockery that will make of all the teasing I did then, hmm? 

I will start, as I must, at the beginning.

-

In the summer of my nineteenth year, you arrived at our small outposting with little enough fuss. An emissary from the remains of the university, you told us, a parchment-thin fiction that no one bothered to examine too closely. Why should we care why you were here? Always on the move, it was not easy for us to find or to keep tutors, and we were happy enough to have someone novel and interesting in our midst. And to have a wizard there to help us, should we encounter a new battle, could only be an asset.

I was there when you arrived, sitting primly and yet slightly unsteadily on your horse. You never did have the knack for it. We certainly argued enough over your attitude towards them during our time together. Beasts of burden they may be, but aren't we all, Tutor, when one looks at it in the abstract? And how can you expect a horse to treat you well, if you see it only as a beast?

Tempting but quite unfair, to argue with one who is not present. I wonder if you indulge in it as often as I do.

I tried to help you down from your horse--it seemed as though you might fall. You scoffed at my offer, looking down your sharp nose at me. "Child," you said, "your aid is unnecessary."

"I haven't been a child for some time," I said, cheerfully enough. My father and a few other members of our community approached to greet you properly, but something compelled me to continue speaking to you instead of fading back. A premonition, or stubbornness, or perhaps something as simple as the spark in your eyes. "You can call me Alyosha. You must have come a long way--I would love to hear about your travels. We are fairly out of the way here." 

It did not escape my notice that despite your admonishment, you had used my shoulder to steady yourself. You watched me, for a moment, and took back your hand. "Perhaps," you said. "It has been a long time since I have had such an eager student."

I smiled my most brilliant smile, and stepped aside to allow you to be given the proper sort of hospitality. You looked back over your shoulder at me just once, an eyebrow quirked. I went about the rest of my work that day utterly distracted. You would have, I was sure, such wonderful stories to tell.

It soon became apparent your interest lay with the Grand Tour itself, and you arranged to stay, to continue your study of the phenomenon. You were fascinating to me, even then: I had met many sorts of people in our time in the Tour's shadow, but never a man like you. Your logic was a different kind than the one I was used to, springing as it did from the university and not from the church. 

I found you that night beside the cookfire. Miss Alenna, who served as our leader at that time, was insisting that you take another portion; she thought you were much too thin. It was a diatribe I had often been subject to myself, and I covered my mouth to hide my amusement.

I sat down beside you, and stole one of the rolls from your plate. I remember the look that you gave me then--sharp, but surprised, too. You were not used to being teased. I thought, looking at you then, that you seemed lonely. A common enough affliction, in a place like my home.

“Hello,” I said. I offered you half of my pilfered roll, and--not knowing what else to do, I think--you took it back. “You used to teach at the university, right?”

“I did,” you agreed. A cloud passed over your face. “A long time ago.”

“My father used to tell me stories about it--legends, I guess. He never saw it. What was it like?”

You began to tear your half of the roll into pieces. I should have warned you not to--the nearby birds in the area where we were settled then could be quite contentious--but I was captivated. “It doesn’t matter,” you said. “That place is long gone now, its scholars scattered in every direction.”

“I know. But doesn’t that make it more important, to tell its story? To make sure that it’s remembered the way that you want it to be?”

The way that I felt then, when you turned your eyes to me--you are the only one who has ever made me feel that way, Tutor. Like I was a rock you could crack open, and find brilliant stone inside. Like the things I said had merit. You would always argue with me until your voice grew hoarse, but even then you always treated my words as if they had weight.

“The story won’t bring the university back.”

“Not by itself,” I said. I leaned forward. “But it would plant the seed from which a new university could grow--if you told people about it, what it was like, all that you accomplished, someone will hear, and decide to start the university anew. If you want to rebuild, then that’s how.”

“You make it sound very easy,” you said, a smile in your tone. 

I shrugged. “Most things aren’t,” I said. “But tell me. Do you think it would be worth it?”

“I am not sure.” And then you sat back, and you began to tell me a story. “They called me Tutor,” you began, and I sat and listened. You told me only a piece, that night, a piece of a whole that I would not know the entire truth of for a very long time. And when you were finished, I asked if you would be my Tutor, at least for a time.

You were quiet for several minutes before you said, looking down at your hands, that you would. I don’t think you saw how brightly I smiled when you agreed.

-

We met first in a dusty and infrequently used tent, the one that had been relegated to you for use as your study, and which you slowly began to share with me. Our lessons could not entirely be called that, not the way my lessons with the church were. They were more like conversations, long and unending, each discussion looping back on itself recursively. I wanted to hear everything you knew of Hieron, of all the places I had not yet seen, but you and I could never agree on what your observations meant. I used to joke that if we looked at the same spot in the grass, you would see shadow and I would see sunshine. 

And yet, you spoke always of movement, never of stagnation. You were not content to leave the world as it was. You were determined to change it. I could see it even then, though you told me so little of your true intentions in those days. Idealism shone from your very eyes, Tutor, inescapable, no matter how you tried to hide from it. I saw it then as I see it still, those times when I see you at all. 

I told you of my work with the church, sometimes, of my hopes for the future, precious and held close to my chest. 

“I think I could do some good,” I told you once, on a cool and quiet night. The stars had begun to shine, but still I lingered in our tent. My thoughts were too busy for sleep. “Out here, we live such scattered lives, and from what you tell me of the rest of Hieron, it doesn’t sound much different. The church could be a way to bind us all together, even with such a great distance between each community.”

You ran a hand through your hair and sighed. “The church may act as a thread, but it has always been a tenuous one. Easily snapped. And not all connections are desirable, Alyosha.”

“So you think that we’re all better off alone?”

“Sometimes, I think it is better than the alternative.” 

“You’ll see,” I said. So confident, back in those days. “I’ll show you. The church has helped me in so many ways. It has kept me from despair. I can use it to spread hope to others, Tutor, I’m sure of it.”

To my surprise, you smiled at me, your eyes crinkling. “Any bulwark against despair is valuable. I will look forward to your lesson.”

A few weeks into your time with us, your first shipment of books arrived. You were kind enough not to laugh at the expression my face when you opened the box and I saw what was inside. My father, when he found me poring over one of them later that night, was not so forgiving: he laughed and laughed at the star-struck look on my face. But he couldn’t blame me; books are difficult to travel with, and there always seemed to be something more important to pack, every time that we had to move. To have seen so many books in one place--to hear you say that it was only a small fraction of your collection--was a wondrous thing. 

You dug through the box while I continued to stare, until finally you pulled out a heavy tome, leather cover cracked with age. When you handed it to me, I could only blink at you. 

You raised a brow. “To study properly requires the correct tools,” you said. “That volume contains many of the earliest surviving works of philosophy in Hieron. I thought you might find it interesting.”

I did, of course. I stammered out some words of thanks, and I carried the book back to my father’s tent, held close to my chest. I did not realize that I was blushing until I sat down there, my heart still pounding in my throat.

It was a fairly simply gift. I did not realize, yet, why it was affecting me so. But I spent all of that night reading it, determined at first that I would have something interesting to say about it when next we met. Soon enough I was simply caught up in the text. I had never read anything like it before. It was a lovely challenge, to curl my mind around unfamiliar words and turns of phrase, to excavate the footnotes until I could uncover a sentence’s meaning. 

For the first time, I thought of what it truly might have been like, had I been able to attend the university. If that is how we had met. That, at least, would not have been much different. Even then, I was sure that you would always be my Tutor. 

-

We spoke of the book you had given me the next day. I was bubbling over with excitement, like the sparkling wine I had drunk only once, at a long-ago celebration. I couldn’t stop speaking, and I thought that soon you would cut me off. You didn’t. You listened to me not exactly patient--I know what it is like when you are patient with me. This wasn’t patience; it was interest. You wanted to hear what I had to say. You thought I was someone worth discussing this text with. That though my thoughts would probably not align with yours--even in the short time we had known each other, it was clear we did not often agree--you still wished to hear them. My stomach felt warm at the thought, like I really had been drinking wine.

I don’t remember all of what we spoke about--my mind is too full of the pounding of my heart, the flush that crawled up the back of my neck and spilled across my cheeks. I remember only one of the essays we discussed, a treatise by the philosopher remembered only as Christopher on the makeup of the human soul.

Christopher believed that people were not meant to live on our own. He believed that the first people that walked across Hieron did so not on two legs but on four, what would seem to us as two people fused together. Until one day, the gods, in their fear that they might be struck down, cleaved them each in half. And from then on they were doomed to live their lives as separate beings. But all hope was not lost, for the two halves of each whole could still find each other. If they met they would wish to spend all of their days together, and never, when questioned, be able to articulate why. But they would be as inseparable as they once would have been, had they not been torn apart. Love, to Christopher, was the pursuit of many becoming one whole. 

It was not a myth that was particularly flattering to our lord, but still I could not help but find it captivating.

“A preposterous legend,” you scoffed, and I argued with you at length.

“Even if the story is not literally true, mightn’t it still be true at its heart? It’s a call against loneliness, Tutor, nothing more.” I did believe this, but the truth was, I also simply found the notion romantic. It aligned with what I believed--with what I believe--about the world: that when we stand together, we are stronger. We are closer to what we are meant to be.

“It is prideful to imagine that the gods would meddle so in human affairs,” you said, “and fanciful to think that because of them, we each have--what? Another who is destined for us? I do not let some idea of _fate_ dictate my affairs.”

But Tutor, I wanted to ask, then how else do you explain us?

I was drawn to you from the moment we met, and the pull only grew more urgent every time we spoke. I knew that it must be the same for you. I could read it in your eyes, in the way you did not treat me like anyone else. 

I realized what I meant to say--what I had only just then articulated to myself--and the words stuck in my throat, as sticky and cloying as candy. I made my excuses and fled, your curious gaze following me out of the tent. 

We had not known each other for very long. It was a foolish thing for me to think, that the story Christopher had written down thousands of years before I was born described what you and I were to each other. That we have always been two parts of the same whole. But the way that our history has borne out, Tutor, I am not so sure that the young, guileless boy I was then was entirely wrong.

-

The rest of that summer passed in much the same manner: we studied together, as often as I could snatch the time to do so, and when we were not together I wished that we were. 

I was a rather silly young man in those days, I will grant you that. I thought I had nothing better to think of than the lilt in your voice when you scolded me, what it might sound like if you were to soften your words instead. Of the ink forever staining your hands, and the patterns that ink might make on my own skin. Of your eyes, always so serious, and what I could say to make them dance. 

Of all our many lessons, the first one you taught me was patience. I learned it well during that long and endless summer. I did not quite know what I wanted from you, Tutor, which is not to say that I was wholly naïve. But I could not decide whether I would rather hold your hand or listen to you speak or have you brush my hair from my eyes, and in practice I had none of these things. I thought myself so clever, and I knew that I had caught your eye, and so I applied myself to flirting with you mercilessly, over books or meals or when we sat together to watch fireflies, and I leaned closer to you than could ever be necessary. And yet for a long while it seemed I could not turn your head, no matter how many lingering glances I threw your way. 

In its own way, I enjoyed living in that liminal space, hanging on that precipice. It was novel, and fun, and required no risk on my part. And so we wiled away the summer like that, because back then I believed we had all the time in the world. And then one night, when I was considering whether I should put my hand on your knee, you looked up from your book and adjusted your glasses and said, quite calmly, “It appears that I am going to have to depart soon.”

I blinked at you. My hand landed on your knee without my meaning it to. “Oh,” I said, feeling suddenly quite stupid. Of course you were going to leave. This wasn’t your home. You had only ever been visiting. I had known that our acquaintance would not be permanent, and still I felt almost as though I had been struck. 

This is how young I was, Tutor: I hadn’t even thought about it. That someday you would leave. “Where are you going?”

“I had a letter this morning,” you said. You closed your book and began to trace the cover with a finger. “A contact of mine in Rosemerrow has something that requires my attention. I have lingered here longer than I intended, and I worry that my research is beginning to suffer.” You looked up at me, and I saw you swallow. “I will give you her address,” you said. “You can--I will do my best to write.”

I nodded. We watched each other, teetering. I squeezed your knee and stood up. “I’ll miss you,” I said, feeling small and inadequate and upset, and angry with myself for being so. 

You opened your book again, your glasses slipping down your nose. “Don’t abandon your studies in my absence,” you said. “You are one of my most promising pupils, Alyosha.”

I should have taken it as an omen, that you left so soon after we met. But I was used to partings, you see--to grow up as I did, always moving where the whims of the Grand Tour forced us to move, always knowing that the next battle, if it came, could take your loved ones away from you--it encourages one to see every attachment as fleeting, to see every gift of time with someone as a holy blessing. I was comfortable with impermanence, and I insisted, stubbornly, on fighting back against it when I could. I planted seeds every place where we stopped long enough, and I imagined the trail of beauty I was leaving behind. Perhaps many of those flowers were trampled, but I like to believe that somewhere they still sprout, that their petals are picked up by the wind to tangle in another young man’s hair. You never believed it, but we are all of us part of a cycle, Tutor.

I used to think often of what it might feel like to become lost. The prelate who raised me, who wept so over that locket, would surely weep all the harder for me. There were cats who would go unfed, lessons unlearned, meals uncooked. The brightness of those connections, I found, overcame any fear. I have often wished it could be the same for you.

“You will come back,” I said. “Won’t you?”

You watched me with a deep seriousness in your eyes. “Of course,” you told me. And I believed you. And by the end of the week you were gone.

-

And so you taught me my second lesson: what it is to miss someone, truly, with your entire heart and soul. How even small tasks become onerous, under the weight of those who are not there to aid you in them. I admit that my studies suffered greatly. The world is an endlessly fascinating place, and no person could ever live long enough to fully enjoy all its knowledge, and yet--the pursuit of that knowledge lost some of its shine, without you there to enjoy it with me. 

I admit, too, that I grew somewhat morose. The prelate who raised me noticed, and only shook his head at me, but he did so with a smile. As you learned, Tutor, to live in the eastern reaches of Hieron, where the Grand Tour is always lapping at our heels, requires taking even the smallest things as signs of hope. I cannot say that my father approved of where I had decided to lay my affections, but it is no small or unremarkable thing to fall in love. And I was young enough then that even as I ached for your return, I did not think of my affection for you as something that could hurt. 

The third lesson you taught me was my own love of the written word. I never had occasion to write letters before I met you, Tutor, hard as it might be to believe, knowing me now. It is a skill I would have developed anyway, of course; no exarch travels Hieron without collecting their fair share of correspondents. But it was different then. I saved all the money I had to buy ink and parchment whenever we had the opportunity to barter, and I stayed up far later than was wise, worrying over each turn of phrase.

My father presented me with a pen for my twentieth birthday, entirely without comment. It was winter by then, six months since you'd left, and your letters were the highest point of my days. Even my time preparing to join the church, the culmination of my studies, could not compare. 

I had thought that perhaps my feelings for you might dissipate, scatter to the wind like seeds in your absence. Instead they took root and blossomed, a thorny rose entangled in my chest. 

-

You did not announce your return, which in retrospect is very like you.

I was out gathering herbs a half a mile from our new encampment. Or rather, I was supposed to be--it was a beautiful spring day, and I was distracted by the wind blowing through my hair and the sun against my cheeks, by the birds and their brilliant feathers and melodic songs. I held my basket in a loose grasp, smiling at the sky. We had only just outrun the last battle, but I thought that things were looking up. That perhaps there would be no more, in this new corner of Hieron that we had found.

I heard a horse approaching, and I turned to greet whatever traveler had come to visit us. My father would have scolded me for my lack of caution, but I could feel lightness on the air that day. I knew I would not come to any harm under His sun.

When I saw who it was that was approaching--still as terrible a rider as ever, Tutor--I dropped my basket and ran to you, thoughtless. You convinced your mount to stop by the time that I reached you, and slid from your saddle even more unceremoniously than you had the first time we met. I caught you in my arms and realized, abruptly, that I had grown taller since we last saw each other. The last bit of my growth spurt put me nearly a head above you.

You opened your mouth. I could imagine perfectly what you would say--you would brush off your fall and inquire about my studies, imperiousness in your tone to cover the softness in your eyes, and I was filled with such a sudden rush of affection that I could hardly stand it. I moved my hands from your waist to your cheeks, and I could feel the words die in your throat as you stared at me. 

I bent down to kiss you. It had been months, and back then I thought that was such a long time; I didn't want to waste any more if it.

“Welcome home, Tutor,” I said when I pulled away, stroking my thumb against the tip of your ear.

“A fine welcome indeed,” you said, huffily, and I laughed and laughed and kissed you again until your horse snorted and stamped her foot, bored of us. 

I brought you and your disgruntled horse back to our encampment, your hand clasped in mine, and I listened patiently with everyone else as we heard the news you brought from the west. And then that night I snuck into your tent, as if anyone who had seen me watching you that evening had any room for doubt about how I felt for you.

You were rummaging through your pack when I entered, and you didn't look up until you’d found what you were looking for: another book, this time a much slimmer volume. “It was penned by an old prelate--I am not as well versed in the history of the church as you are, but I was assured it is a worthwhile text.”

I took the book and sat down on your bedroll, smiling down at the cover. “Thank you,” I said, and I put the book aside. “Come here, Tutor.”

You did, and sat down beside me, your spine stiff and straight. I took your chin in my hand and turned you to face me. “Tutor--is this alright?”

After what seemed a long moment of effort, you met my eyes. “Yes,” you said, roughly. “I only--you are very young, Alyosha.”

“Nonsense,” I said, with the surety of the very young. I pressed my forehead to yours so that we were sitting nose to nose. I could feel your heartbeat under my palm where it rested on your neck. I closed my eyes. “I haven’t stopped thinking of you since you left. I have often thought, Tutor, that you are the most important person in my life. As strange as it may seem.” And I was right.

You started to say something, and then kissed me instead, sudden and insistent.

The first boy I ever kissed had lived in the same settlement as me for several months. He, too, was training to take a place in the church, and so on occasion we talked, of Samothes and also languidly of nothing at all. He had a book of folktales, and sometimes he would read to me. The night before his company moved on from mine, we sat by the fire together, his hand resting on his chin, his face unreadable. I kissed him both out of curiosity and because I wanted to take that blank look from his face, to give him something to smile about before he left. And he did.

So I was not wholly inexperienced, that first night, though in truth with you it did not feel at all the same. I did not feel calm and curious. I felt like my skin was flint, ready to spark at any moment. And I was nervous, though I would never have admitted it then. It didn't occur to me at all that you might be nervous, too. 

I curled up against you later that night, feeling tired and warm and as satisfied as any cat has ever been in a patch of sunshine.

“I often wished you were with me, in Rosemerrow,” you said, voice quiet, hand running through my hair. “You remind me of the university. I think, when I am around you, I am more of the man I was then than the man I am now.”

“I like the man you are now,” I said, burrowing closer. “Go to sleep, Tutor. Tonight is no night for brooding.”

You chuckled softly, and agreed, and we fell asleep like that, your fingers tangled in my hair and your chest beating steadily against my ear.

That spring you taught me how all-consuming love can be. I cannot separate the days in my mind, for they all blur together, one touch bleeding into the next, your knee beside mine as we read from a book together and your hands in my hair as we kissed by the dying embers of a fire. I wish, often, that we could go back to those carefree days, rose-colored in my memory. In your grip I became a precious thing, as a rough stone becomes polished and shining under a jeweler's careful touch. 

I wonder, now, of all the things you knew then and didn’t tell me. Of the fears you were keeping locked deep within your heart. But back then I was happy in a simple and uncomplicated way. And I like to think that perhaps you were too. Even if only for a little while.

One evening, as I sat cooling my heels in a stream while you rested beside me, refusing to take off your shoes despite my insistence, I told you once more of my hopes. They were still small things then, plants just beginning to unfurl in the face of the sun. I was raised by a prelate. I had always wanted to become part of the church, to bring His holy light to even the darkest of places, but it was you who convinced me to aspire not to a stationary position, but to an ever-changing one. One does not become an exarch in a day--even then I knew that--but it was not such an unachievable goal. 

You watched me as I spoke, and I could not read your eyes.

"Well, Tutor?" I asked, finally, when you insisted on remaining silent. The buzz of the mayflies and the croaks of the frogs filled my ears instead.

"You're a talented pupil, Alyosha," you said, a touch coolly, but I was too cheerful to be stung. "I'm sure you will do well in anything you choose to do."

"That's quite nonspecific," I said. "But thank you. I do appreciate it." I rested my cheek on your shoulder and grasped your hand in mine. A childish impulse, I admit, but perhaps I was figuring out that you were someone who needed to be held onto.

I squeezed your hand, and you spoke again. "I suppose I had hoped that after our time together, you might choose a different path. That is all."

I laughed. "There is no longer a university with its hallowed halls that I might walk," I pointed out. "And anyway, I don't believe that life would suit me."

You ran your thumb across the back of my hand. "Perhaps not. But even without the university, there is so much of Hieron to study. There are many pressing problems that demand the attention of scholars."

"Yes," I agreed, "just as there are many pressing problems that demand the attention of a priest. I know what you think of my creed, Tutor, but to my mind it is the most important thing in all of Hieron. No course of study could ever change that."

You pressed a kiss to my hairline, just above my ear. I felt so warm at the contact that I missed the brittleness of your tone. "No, I suppose not."

I know it is foolish, to spend time thinking of untraveled paths, possibilities left fallow. But I cannot help but wonder, on occasion, what other paths I might have traveled in my life. I can see myself in my dreams, sometimes, living out other lives--perhaps in some other world I am in fact merely a student, in a still-standing university, wiling away my days poring over books. Or perhaps I am a humble gardener, testing my strength pulling weeds, wiping the sweat from my brow. Or I am a smith, striking blows with my hammer, creating new and elegant wonders.

Or I am there, with you. 

What did you expect from me then, Tutor? Were you going to ask me to join you in your endeavor? I do not even know how well-formed your plans were, back then. It was fifteen years ago. Perhaps in those days there was some other line of inquiry you wanted to pursue. Perhaps you wanted to tell me of your troubles. Perhaps you wanted to ask me for my help, and only just held the words back, turning to ash on your tongue.

Perhaps. I use that word so often, when I am speaking of you. It is a hard thing, to realize how much unsurety lies in the writing of this account. You are the person I know best in the world, Tutor, and still there are great gaps in my knowledge, vast seas that my pen cannot cross alone. 

I wish you were here. I wish I could ask you questions, even if you would only deflect rather than answer. I wish that I could once again rest my feet in a stream and hold your hand in mine.

What I want most is a return to simplicity. Writing of my early days does make me childish, I suppose. It doesn't matter: you are not here to answer my questions. I never did choose another path. This path, I believe, is the only one that was ever available to me. Not necessarily a belief borne out of faith, but perhaps out of necessity. If all the pain I have endured was unavoidable, then there is no use regretting it. 

I'm sorry, Tutor. Reminiscence ought to cheer me up, but these days it only serves to make me bitter. Another night, perhaps, will serve this account better. 

The evening before I was due to leave to accept my first assignment, an apprenticeship to Exarch Lynden in the west, we stayed up late into the night, a candle between us casting our shadows against the canvas of the tent. You seemed content to act as though this was only another one of our lessons. I was not. I stood up in the middle of one of your sentences and sat down instead in your lap, curling there the way the cat that often traveled with us would. I tucked my face into the curve of your neck so that I could feel the steadiness of your pulse under my cheek. 

"This is to be our last night together for a long while," I said. "Are we to spend it idling over ancient tomes?"

Your hand found its way to my hair, loose over my shoulders, as it so often did. It's funny: you have never once told me that you liked it, and yet I often used to amuse myself by imagining your face if I were to cut it. 

"And why not?" you asked, but your voice was very soft. "There are few greater pleasures in the world than sitting beside a wise companion and discussing texts that you both hold dear."

I laughed. "You think me wise, Tutor?"

"You will be, someday.” Such a high compliment, coming from you. I leaned up to kiss you, slowly but hard enough to nearly topple over your chair, and we did not speak much more until morning. But when I remember that night, as I so often do, what I remember most is the warmth in your voice, the gentleness of your hands carding through my hair, the way your arm wrapped around my waist, ensuring that I would not fall. You can be so gentle, Tutor, when you let yourself be. I always saw it as my duty to draw that gentleness out of you, as if I were pulling wire from molten metal, turning your characteristic sharpness into something thin and delicate.

I left early the next morning. We did not speak much--the air was too heavy for that--but you braided my hair for me. I did not discover until my company stopped for lunch that you had tied a glass bead onto the end of the ribbon. You may not remember, but it was a beautiful thing, Tutor, filled with vibrant reds and golds, the kind of trinket I have always loved and you have always scoffed at. I wore it around my neck on a thin cord, and whenever I felt lonely I would thumb at it, and remember your hands in my hair.

I wish I could say that I still had it with me, but it was among the many things from my home in Velas that I could not save when I fled. I wonder, Tutor, if there is a lesson in that.

-

I let myself become engrossed in my studies. Exarch Lynden was a kind woman, and we did good work. I helped rebuild bridges, sweating in the heat of His sun. I took care of children when their parents were sick or busy on other church business. I argued with Exarch Lynden and anyone else who would listen about scripture, refining my interpretations until I was sure I fully understood the holiness of His word.

Still, I missed you. I missed our talks. It is one thing to discuss scripture with those that believe in its light as I do; but to talk over its intricacies with one who does not believe it is, in some ways, a more useful tool. I don’t only hope to help those who make their lives within the church. It is important to find the grains of truth within His texts that even you, despite yourself, find acceptable. 

These are the things I told myself. That talking with you had been _useful_ , as if that even began to cover it. And I did miss our arguments. I missed the sound of your voice, the way your brow furrowed, the fire in your eyes when you were sure that you were right. The way you looked at me in wonder when I convinced you of something, no matter how small. The times when I could distract you from our discussions entirely, and the fond way you would scold me for it later.

I missed it then, and I miss it now, too.

Time passed much faster than I was used to. I was always busy with one task or another, but I found time to write to you as often as I could. I rambled, using up far more than my fair share of paper and ink, but I wanted to tell you everything that I was learning. And I was always sure to let you know the itinerary of my travels, buried under caveats. I knew that you were busy, I knew travel was always uncertain, I knew you might be too far away for our paths to cross, but if you could find the time to reach my next destination, then perhaps...

I did not expect you to visit. But I did hope, a sputtering fire in my gut, never extinguished. The first lesson than our lord teaches us: his gift of fire can never be truly defeated, for no matter what, the flame is always waiting to spring to life again. 

Any my hope was rewarded. Exarch Lynden and I travelled to Wharfhurst one autumn; she said that I ought to get as full a picture of Hieron as I could while I was still young. “You’ll never see it all,” she told me wryly, “but the older you get the less time you’ll be able to snatch for exploring.” 

There was no church established in Wharfhurst, and no travelling priest was stationed there whose home we might have imposed on, and so when we arrived Lynden sent me to procure rooms at an inn while she took care of our provisions.

I spoke with the innkeeper, first about our rooms and then about the city itself, the best places to buy bread and where I might find a new saddle for a reasonable price. She offered me a tankard of beer on the house, which I accepted, though beer has never been a favorite of mine--you had instilled in me a taste for wine.

When I turned around to find a place to sit and nurse my drink while I waited for Lynden to return, I found you already sitting at a table, staring back at me. Your face was curled into a smirk, but I could see the delight in your eyes.

I did not drop my drink the way I had my basket, the first time we were reunited, but it was a close thing. “Tutor!” I cried, and it was all I could do to walk to your table at a measured pace, instead of breaking into a run despite the smallness of the inn. I set my drink down with shaking hands, and I folded into the seat beside you as gracefully as I could manage. “You didn’t tell me you were coming,” I said. “It’s been--I don’t even know how long.” Over a year, at least--I had turned twenty-two the previous winter. The package of tea you sent me to celebrate had arrived a month late, delayed by bad weather on the roads, the smell of roses and lavender seeping through the package. “It’s so good to see you.” I took a drink to stop myself talking. 

Your eyes moved over me like they could trace my image and keep it, like the lines of one of your drawings. “I have business just farther to the south of here,” you said. “I can only remain for a few days. In truth, I should have left here yesterday, but--” you paused, and seemed unable to continue.

My heart felt full and heavy in my chest, like a pitcher of water about to spill. I put my hand over yours on the table. “I am glad you came, for however long you can stay.”

“It is good to see you too, Alyosha.” Though you would groan at the comparison, you said my name like a prayer, like a holy thing. It has always brought me such joy, to be able to draw that simple act of faith from you.

Exarch Lynden chose that moment to return. I did not noticed her until she had already sat down at our table. She raised a sardonic eyebrow at me, but she did not mention our faces bent close, our hands clasped on the table, the way I swayed towards you like a flower to the sun. She eyed you narrowly before her face settled into a smile. “You must be Tutor Arrell,” she said. “Alyosha speaks very highly of your lessons.”

I blushed. It was true that I had spoken of you often, though I had not realized exactly _how_ often. You withdrew your hand from mine and gathered yourself back into your shell. I resisted the urge to sigh, and I introduced the two of you properly. You were characteristically curt, bordering on rude, and when Lynden got up to get herself a drink from the bar, I kicked you under the table.

You tilted your head, and did not deign to kick me back. “Yes, Pupil?”

“Exarch Lynden has been nothing but kind to me these many months,” I said. “You’re treating her like she personally kidnapped me.”

You scowled and hunched your shoulders. “She may as well have,” you muttered, and I could not stifle my laugh. You glared at me. 

“You’re very cute when you’re being unfair,” I said, and kissed the furrow in your brow. “And who shall I blame for taking you away from me, then?”

I attributed the way your shoulders tightened at the question to Lynden’s return. “I take your point,” you said, and you turned away from me and began interrogating poor Lynden about a new interpretation of some obscure point of church history. She handled it gracefully, and I hid my smile in my cup. 

Lynden was indeed very kind. She gave me a noticeably lighter load of duties while you were there, even when I protested. “Don’t look down upon our lord’s gifts, Alyosha,” she said to me, mock-stern. “You are going to make a fine exarch someday, and you will never expect how busy it will make you. Our lord, in his wisdom, has given you time with someone you love. Who are you to turn it down?”

And so instead of meeting with any of the important figures in Wharfhurst we were meant to be visiting, I spent time in your rooms at the inn, excitedly showing you the new books I had acquired in your absence, all the new things I had learned about the world. 

You let me talk and talk. I asked you, time and time again, to tell me more of your travels, of your work. Every time you deferred, professing a greater interest in my own studies. 

On the third day that you lingered in that town, I finally grew weary of your answers. “Tutor,” I said, sitting cross-legged on your bed, “what, exactly, is the problem?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” you said coolly.

“I tell you everything,” I said, matter-of-fact. I did. I always have. “And you have found every possible way to dodge any question I ask about what you are doing. Don’t you trust me?” I didn’t mean to sound hurt. I don’t even think I realized that I was until I spoke.

You were startled, too. You put your hand on my cheek, and on impulse I grabbed it, holding it to my face. “There is no one in Hieron I trust more than you, Alyosha.”

“I know that it must seem small to you. My vision of the world, so limited by my experience. But I am no child, Tutor. I grew up with the Grand Tour stalking my every step. And I am not merely your student, either. It is disingenuous to pretend so.”

You traced my cheekbone with a finger, and I closed my eyes. I hated to be cross with you, and in those days my anger had no staying power. I had not learned how to stoke the fire of it, to let it burn in my voice and my throat and my heart. You only taught me that later. “My work, these days, it...does not bring me joy. It is hard, and it must be done, but the doing of it has become a solemn affair. You bring me joy, Alyosha. I don’t wish to repay that joy with despair.”

I swallowed, and opened my eyes. “You could never make me despair,” I said. I remember that very clearly. I believed it. “And whatever your burden, it would be lightened by the sharing.”

We were sitting very close. You kissed me rather than answer, kissed me the way that you sometimes did, as if I was the only thing left in the world. I felt so glad that you had admitted to my making you _happy_ that I let you get away with it. And the next day you had to leave, to attend to your urgent business, and so I did not get another chance to needle the truth out of you.

Perhaps I knew that nothing good would come of the day when you finally did tell me what it was you were so afraid of. The creeping thing in the dark that made you wake up in my arms sometimes, shivering and quiet and clutching me tighter than you would ever dare to in daylight. 

I selfishly thought that I could be enough to lighten your load, even without knowing what it was. I resolved to write you every day, to let Lynden laugh at me good-naturedly as I did. And for a long time I contented myself with that, with the belief that I was helping. I suppose you know how intoxicating that belief can be.

-

I did not see you again for a long time. It was after I had settled in Rosemerrow, for the time being--I was to be officially declared an exarch at the church there, pending the last few bits of paperwork. Snow was piling up outside the door of the small home I was staying in, a property of the church which was passed around to whatever visiting priest needed it. It seemed that it would be a while until I could begin my travels in earnest, I was thinking, and I sat in front of the fire musing on many things: the politics of the city, the flavor of my warmed cider, how much warmer I might feel, if I had someone to share this comfortable night with.

I had just begun to compose a letter when the banging on my door began. I was startled, and I knocked my inkwell over, ruining the few tentative sentences I had penned. So when I opened the door, I was already cursing under my breath before I saw what lay beyond it.

I do not believe you were brought to my doorstep by divine intervention, by some act of fate. But to have you appear so suddenly, just as I was thinking of you...

It certainly was not ideal. There was, of course, the matter of your pallor and your wound, still bleeding sluggishly from beneath the hand you held pressed tight to your abdomen. 

In the moment I was much more panicked. I stood dumbstruck for long seconds before you wavered and I grabbed you on instinct, pulling you inside. I helped you lie down on my bed, and you smiled up at me, your eyes unfocused. I could barely breathe, Tutor; I knew you. I know you. I do not trust your easy smiles. 

"How did you get here? Who _hurt_ you?" When I looked closer, it was not a very deep cut, but it had been untended for some time--long enough for you to find me in the sprawl of Rosemerrow.

"The roads are dangerous, Pupil," you said, and at least, I thought, you were able to understand me. You looked up at me, and your eyes fluttered shut. I know what you look like in sleep, Tutor, and this was not that. Your brow remained taut, your jaw clenched tight. "Don't worry. I took care of them. And received a parting gift for my trouble."

I pushed up your shirt and lay my hands on your stomach, careless of the blood. I closed my eyes and I prayed. You drew in a sharp breath. I did not often do this sort of work for the church. My hands, I knew, were shaking. But there was nothing else to be done. And if I could not help you, then what was any of my training worth?

When I opened my eyes, your skin was whole again under my bloody hands. Your gaze, however, had still not sharpened. You looked at me with a softness I did not know what to do with.

"Ah," you said. "Alyosha. I dreamed that you were gone." 

"I'm here now, Tutor." Your eyes slipped closed. My hands left red smudges against your cheeks and your hair.

I paced the entire night away, unable to settle into my skin. I wanted to go find help, but there was no use going out in this weather, at this late hour. And I did not want to leave you alone, your skin so pale against my sheets and your blood so vivid. I worried if I turned my eyes away from you that you would disappear like smoke, to be breezed away by the wind. 

In the morning you were still there, breathing shallowly, your eyes moving quick beneath your eyelids. I swallowed my fear and I fetched a doctor that I knew, banging on her door and babbling until she agreed to come back with me. I felt bad for scaring her, but I could not find any of my reserves of calm within me. I’d used them all up in the night.

Aside from the cut that I had managed to heal, you had two broken ribs and a spectacular array of bruises. My friend wrapped your ribs and left me with a salve for the bruising, and she gave me a tin of tea.

“For you,” she said, eyeing me narrowly. “To help you sleep. Take care of yourself, Alyosha. And don’t let whatever this man is wrapped up in come back to bite you.”

She was always suspicious. And the mundanity of her suspicion calmed me. Perhaps that was her intention. I smiled and waved her off, and then I curled up beside you on the bed. It wasn’t made for two; I had not furnished my house in Rosemerrow in expectation of you ever coming here. I had hoped, yes, but I knew better than to let that hope have materiality.

It reminded me of sharing space with you back in your tent, when we first knew each other. And the safety of that memory lulled me to sleep.

When I awoke, sun was streaming through the window. I could see snow melting against the panes. And you were running your hand through my hair, clumsy but steadily. 

In those few seconds before my mind was fully awake, I thought that I was twenty again. I could almost hear the birds singing outside our tent. 

But then the world resolved itself. I sat up quickly and pressed my hand to your forehead, inspected your bandages and the wrapping around your ribs. You endured my scrutiny quietly.

When I was finished, you said, “I wasn’t sure that you were real. It would not be...” You caught your words and held them, birds in a broken cage.

“I’ve dreamed of you too, Tutor,” I said, feeling frayed at the edges but unable to stop my smile. Despite everything, it was good to have you back. “Are you hungry?”

You shook your head. “All right,” I said, and I lay back down beside you, my hand pressed lightly to your stomach where your wound had been. “I’m glad that you’re okay.” My voice wavered.

“I’m made of sterner stuff than those ruffians,” you said, offended, and I laughed.

“Still,” I said. “I will worry anyway.”

“Surely there are more important things to worry about.”

“Perhaps.” I tucked my head into your neck, feeling your warmth against my cheek. “None of those things arrived on my doorstep, bleeding, in the middle of a snowstorm, however.”

“The most terrifying prospects are often those that we cannot see.”

“I would argue that we must deal with the visible problems first, before we delve into those that hide in the shadows,” I said, “but I don’t wish to argue. Will you stay here for a while? At least until you recover.”

I could feel your throat work. “Yes,” you said, finally. “There is no use travelling with--what is it, broken ribs?”

I kissed your collarbone, and sat up. “You’re quite right,” I said. “I’ll make you some tea.” And I was not happy that your were hurt, Tutor. I would give anything to make you whole again, to erase the terror of that night from my memory. But I’m not sure what else would have ever allowed you to stay there with me for that long winter we spent together in Rosemerrow. 

My doctor friend seemed nonplussed by your presence, but despite her comments you were not a difficult houseguest. Your magic kept the fire burning in the hearth day and night--and though I complained sometimes that your efforts were blasphemy, you parried my arguments skillfully. If all fires burn with our lord’s light, you said, then surely stoking them, by whatever means, was no heresy. 

I accepted this, happy enough to have convinced you to argue theology with me. And in truth, I liked the extra warmth. 

It was, anyway, a familiar argument. We had it once back in the shadow of the Grand Tour, when instead of lighting a candle you cast light above us with your spells. You always preferred to create a gentle blue glow, as if only the inside of a flame burned. I had endless questions about the nature of that light, about whether it came from the same place as more mundane fires. I believe that our lord has a hand in all miracles of magic, but you protested. The light that you brought was of your own making, you said, with no intervention from any divinity.

After a few days spent in my home, you commandeered my kitchen table, covering it in ink and papers, annotating my books without stopping to ask for my permission. I run my fingers over those notes sometimes, Tutor, in those books that I managed to keep. I wonder how many bits and pieces of you, scraps of your thoughts wrought in ink and paper, are scattered about Hieron, in every library that still survives. Your annotations and your letters may outlive us all. 

I learned that winter how secretive you were in your small kindnesses. I would rush out in the morning, leaving all my chores for later, after I had dispensed with my duties, only to return to find them all completed in my absence. You never said a word about the dishes, cleaned and returned to their cabinets, the floor swept clean, the snow melted away from my small porch.

“Thank you, Tutor,” I would say with a kiss to your cheek, and you would never admit to knowing what I was thanking you for.

I became a true exarch while you were there. I received my blessing from Rosemerrow’s prelate, and I could not help my giddiness when I returned home. I had set out to accomplish a task, and through years of hard work had achieved it. I felt satisfaction down to my bones. 

You were busy that day too, Tutor. I came home to roasted pheasant and a bottle of wine on the table. 

“I told you that I would show you,” I said during dinner, half of that bottle of wine warming me from my toes to my fingers. It was excellent. I felt light with the knowledge that you must have ordered it just for this occasion. “And I will. You can come with me, if you wanted--Prelate Keva said I would be getting my first assignment within a few weeks. I have missed travelling. I suppose I got used to it in my youth.” I looked up to smile at you, hoping to share the joke, but I found you frowning down at your plate. You had not eaten much.

You didn’t say anything, but then, you didn’t have to. I sighed and put down my fork. “I know,” I said. “You can’t come with me.”

“I will never be of any use to your church, Alyosha.”

“I don’t expect you to.” The wine sharpened my words. “I only thought you might like to accompany me for a little while longer.”

“I have enjoyed these past few months. Perhaps more than I should have. It is selfish of me to indulge in this sham of domesticity, Alyosha, when there is so much work left to do.”

I turned my face away and blinked at the wall. “It wasn’t a sham,” I said. 

“I don’t mean to be cruel,” you told me, a vein of something wretched running through your voice.

“No,” I agreed. “You never do.” I turned back to look at you. The fire sputtered in the hearth. “I will be leaving soon enough. Let’s enjoy the time we have, all right?” I poured more wine into your glass, and we spoke of lighter things. I ignored the crease in your brow, and you ignored the roughness of my voice, and together we did a passable imitation of lovers who were not merely biding the time until our next parting. 

I left two weeks later, traveling to the south. “Alyosha,” you said, stopping me just before I went out the door. You were packing too--Rosemerrow had never been your favorite city, and without me there, I suppose there was nothing to keep you in it. “You know I hold no love for the church. I think that your goals might be better achieved through other methods. But--there is no man who I think is better equipped to heal the cracks in Hieron’s soil. You will do a good job.” You turned back to the books you were carefully sorting into chests. Though you’d come here with nothing, you had accumulated quite a collection by now. “You will bring light, as you have done so for me.”

To my dismay, tears began to prickle at my eyes. “Thank you,” I said. “Keep your own light burning in my absence, won’t you?”

When you looked up at me, your eyes were bright with the idealism that had first drawn me to you, all those many years ago. “I will,” you said. “I have an idea. My work may be done sooner than I thought.”

 _What work?_ I wanted to ask. What shortcut had you found? What thorny problem where you always working yourself to the bone to solve? I had gathered bits and pieces. I have never been a fool, and I sat beside you while you worked almost every night. But I could not put all those pieces together into a coherent whole. And I did not want to ask you again, just as I was leaving. I could not bear, yet, to leave you in the middle of a fight. And so I smiled at you and wished you luck before I left, the door to my cottage shutting behind me with finality. Once you moved out as well, it would become property of the church again. I wonder how many other clergy have lived there, in the days that have passed since. I am sure none of them made the place as warm as you and I did, in those few months that we shared it. 

-

You traveled; I traveled. I visited you when I could, first at the small apartments you kept in Velas and then later in the home you made for yourself in Rosemerrow, however much disdain you seemed to hold for the city. On occasion you even came to find me, wherever my path as an exarch took me. And we wiled away years like that, seeing each other for short snatches of time. I could never predict what you would be like when we met again--whether you would be flushed with success from a new victory, some promising avenue of research that you had found, or whether your brow would be drawn and your shoulders hunched with the weight of another failed experiment. 

I wrote you letters until my fingers cramped. An exarch’s life runs the risk of being a solitary one--though there were always new people to meet in every place I journeyed to, it was hard to maintain those relationships over a great distance. I had acquaintances in the church of nearly every city in Hieron, but I had few enough friends. And so I wrote to you of every mundanity I might have spoken to a friend over lunch, every useless thought I would have mentioned to you over breakfast, if we still shared the same space. I still do that, you know, though now I discard half the letters rather than send them, knowing they’ll likely go unread. That’s what I’m doing now, I suppose, for the same purpose that I had then: to clarify my own thoughts. To come to a greater understanding of myself. And also to feel, for all the time that I hold the pen in my hand, that I am not alone. With every word I write I can hear your response, just as clear as if you were sitting beside me. 

Three years after I became an exarch, I managed to visit my childhood home--if it can be called that--for the first time since I left it. I thought it would be a happy occasion. I had allowed time to sand down the edges of my memories of that place into something smoother than they really were. I recognized so few of the people, once I arrived, and there was a desperation haunting their eyes that was new, though perhaps as a child I had simply learned not to notice.

The prelate who raised me remained, however, and any disappointment I had was wiped away by how glad I was to see him again. He folded me into his arms and held me tight. “Ah, my son,” he said. “I have missed you.”

We sat and had dinner together in his tent, the way that we used to when I was a boy. I was twenty-eight, and had only recently begun to truly feel that I was not a boy any longer. 

“I was not sure you would ever return,” my father told me, stirring his soup and ignoring my outraged response. “No, no, I don’t mean that as a criticism. Part of me hoped that you would never come back. You know as well as I do how untenable life is out here.”

“And yet still you remain,” I pointed out.

He laughed. “There is good to be done here, just as there is good to be done elsewhere. But you are not meant to sit still, Alyosha, at least not yet. Unless you have given thought to the matter of settling down? Plenty of exarchs decide to give up that life, to become stationary prelates instead. It is easier on families.”

“I have family enough here, I think,” I said. I had not given much thought to the matter. It still seemed like a far away thing, hazy in the distance. I thought that I would like to have children someday, but though my father had been nothing but kind to me, I did not want to do it alone. 

All right, Tutor. I had thought about it. What it might be like, to raise children with you. I entertained such thoughts briefly, and then I put them carefully away.

“You will tell me if that changes,” he said, pointing at me with his spoon. “I would not miss your wedding for the world.”

I grinned. “It would not be a wedding without you there,” I said. 

And perhaps something showed on my face, because my father’s own softened. “And what about that tutor of yours, hmm?”

I smiled down into my soup, sheepishly. I was rather embarrassed of how I had acted back then. “We see each other when we can,” I said. “He--well, we are both very busy.”

He looked pensive for a long moment. “I do hope he’s treating you right, my son.”

“Protective as always,” I said fondly. “Don’t worry about me, father.” 

After that trip I returned to Velas, where you were then living, and I resolved to stay there for a time. I daydreamed of spending an entire year in your company. The thought seemed such a luxury.

I was offered a place to stay by the church, but I missed the closeness we had shared that winter, when we lived together first by necessity and then simply out of habit. You had your own apartments in Velas, and I insinuated myself in them quite skillfully. I knew there was no use asking you if I might live there; I simply did so, slowly and by increments, leaving first a few books and then most of my wardrobe, until finally you had cleared space for me in every part of your home.

Perhaps this might seem unfair, but I think even you must concede, Tutor, that it was the easiest way. You would never admit to enjoying having me around in the mornings, for silent lunches we both ate at the table while attending to our work, for quiet dinners where we spoke of the most pointless parts of our days. You thought yourself so above domesticity, but when given it you soaked it up like soil starved for water.

You were always so tired, in those days. I would brush my thumbs beneath your eyelids every morning and admonish you to get more sleep. You shrugged off my concern, but I did my best to lure you away from your work when I could, with wine or with debates or with my hands against your face and my mouth on yours. Just as I always had. I clung to the things that did not change.

Prelate Lucius was far from my favorite member of the church, but he was happy enough to have me around, and I have always enjoyed living in Velas. The seaside breeze agrees with me. I completed whatever duties the church found for me with a smile on my face, and I was glad to be able to tell you of them afterwards. A rash of summer sickness sprung up in the Fish District several weeks into my stay, and I took a contingent from the church with me to go see what aid we could offer.

When I returned for the last time after several days of this, you made me tea in jerky movements and admonished me. “You shouldn’t risk your health so for the sake of others,” you said, sticking a cup under my nose.

“I’ll be fine, Tutor,” I said wearily. “And if I did not, what sort of example would I set for the people of Velas?”

“You do more good work than ten other men in this city. You don’t think your continued health is important?”

“Ah, you say the sweetest things. And I didn’t say that.” I drank the rest of my tea and collapsed into your bed, and I was asleep within moments. I did not stay awake long enough to even realize that I was sick. 

Later--a few hours or days, I was not sure--I awoke, feverish, to see you bent over me, your hands clasped tight around one of mine. I thought for a moment that you were casting a spell, but I quickly realized that in fact you were murmuring the words of a prayer, so quiet I could barely make them out.

I still don't know whether that moment was a dream, a conjured fantasy of mine: the idea that I could be the only thing you would dare to have faith for. But, figment or not, your prayer worked, and the next time I awoke my mind was clear once again. You weren’t there. I spared a moment to be upset before I heard you speak, clear as if you were standing in front of me: _I went out to get food. I’ll be back soon, Alyosha._ And underneath your words I could hear a heartbeat, running much quicker than my own. My mouth tasted acrid. I stood up shakily to drink some water, but the bitterness on my tongue remained. I realized, as my breathing began to pick up, that it was your fear.

You had used this spell on me once or twice before, although never for long. Once so that I could run an errand for you, to choose the right book from a large stock that a merchant carried. Another time so that I could give you directions to a particular bakery I wanted you to buy my favorite rolls from. A third time on a rare occasion when we travelled together, to ensure that neither of us became lost. Simple and frivolous things like that. But it did not work the way that it should. You had explained it to me: this spell was meant for simple communication between minds. And any other time you used it, that was how it worked. But between us, our thoughts bled together like cheap ink on paper, and nothing you did could stop it.

The mystery and intimacy of it bothered you and delighted me. But you never agreed to test it further, to discover precisely why this spell worked differently when you used it on me, rather than anyone else.

I let the subject drop. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, and clearly to share your thoughts so closely with me did. I tried not to blame you for that. It was a normal thing, to dislike such claustrophobic intimacy, even with me.

And I knew why it was different. I could feel it, in the press of your heart against mine. 

But you hated that closeness, and I could not blame you for it--you, who believed so fervently in the separateness of humanity from one another. I have never agreed with you in that, but I could only respect the belief you held so tightly.

I sat back down on my bed and closed my eyes, and I thought about what you had done. You had not wanted me to wake up alone, and so you opened a connection between us, something you hated desperately.

I let that knowledge settle into my gut over your anxiety, and I waited for you to return, content that for just a small moment, we were closer to one person than two. 

You returned with two covered dishes, and set them down with a clatter on the table before you came to me. You fell to your knees before me, hands on my thighs, your head bowed. You said my name, ragged.

“I’m all right. I promise you I’m all right.” I ran my hand through the short bristly hair at the back of your neck. I could see your back shaking. I could feel inside my head the sobs you were not letting escape. “Tutor, please, look at me.”

You did. I’d never seen you look so scared, not in the years and years we had known each other. And I could feel it, too. Fear for my well-being, fear that you would be left alone, fear that soon enough we would all be gone--

“Tutor,” I said, fear clawing at my throat, tears stinging at my eyes. I bent over you, pressed my lips to the crown of your head, my loose hair falling around us, sealing us off from the rest of the world. If I could just protect you from the dark--

I felt you raise your hand and wave it in the air, a dismissive gesture, ending the spell. All at once the fear ebbed, a tide returning to sea, and I could breathe again. I gasped and sat back.

“What--Tutor, I don’t understand--”

Your hands gripped my knees tightly, hard enough that I could feel your nails biting into my skin. “I thought that I would come back and find you gone. That something I had done would be wrong, or something I didn’t do--”

“It was just a fever. I didn’t meant to scare you.” I wiped the tears from my eyes. “Do you always feel like that?”

“It’s nothing,” you said. Head bowed once again. Hiding your eyes.

I couldn’t bear to force you to speak, though maybe then would have been the only time I could--you were already so cracked open before me. But I wanted to see you smile again. I wanted to take the fear from your eyes. I wanted to convince you I was alive. And this was the problem I could see, so I pulled you up by your forearms and folded you into my arms, my mouth pressed against your ear. “I’m here,” I said, over and over, and you clung to me, your tears hot against my neck. 

Eventually you stood and dusted yourself off. The food you brought had gone cold, but we ate it together on the bed. Your eyes followed me as if magnetized, as if you couldn’t let me out of your sight. In time you returned to your duties, and I to mine, but for that long day we were simply together, not speaking much, basking in the surety of one another’s presence. I thought whatever darkness you so feared, we could act as one another’s lights. I thought we could stand against it, together. The sort of solutions children think of, that I have yet to grow out of. What creeping monster under a bed cannot be defeated by a light?

I think, even now, that there are still embers within you, Tutor, waiting to be stoked. I remember the way you held onto me so tightly, the naked fear in your eyes. You care so much. You always have, reluctant as you are to show it. I know you want to save us. To save me. But I wish you would give some thought to what will be left of yourself. You, too, deserve saving. Yes, Tutor; even now.

-

Soon enough, my duties called my away, months into my stay in Velas. My dream of spending an uninterrupted year with you remained only that. 

“Don’t worry,” you said to me, looking up from your papers the night before I left. “I will be here when you return.”

I took that assurance to heart, and I set off the next day with a lightness in my step. 

I was only away for a short time--I was to make contact with a small community to the northwest, whose newly established church required help with any number of tasks. I had a pleasant time there, helping the young prelate structure her sermons, repairing windows, cooking meals. The kind of work you would always scoff at, despite its necessity. I kept myself entertained with thoughts of you working beside me, burning yourself at the stove or finding splinters in your fingers. You always saw yourself as so above the physical aspects of this world, as if they were not too part of our lord’s beauty. 

The woman whose house I was staying at asked me, one night, if I had my own spouse waiting for me at home. Her wife was staying out late doing her own work as a scribe. And after a pause, I told her that I did. I told her of my stern husband who had within him the capacity to so be terribly sweet, who had a fire in his eyes that I feared would someday burn him to ash, who worked long into the night when I was not there to stop him.

She laughed, and told me her wife was just the same. "It's up to us to take care of them, hmm?" she said, with a wink and a laugh.

Did I tell this woman a lie, Tutor? Or did I merely tell her a truth I keep locked close within my heart?

It doesn’t matter. When I returned from that trip I came to your apartments to find you gone, only a quick notes scribbled on parchment and left in your stead. I still have it, of course. It read: _I've important matters to attend to in the Archives. Hopefully I will return before you, or soon enough after._

It is not a foregone conclusion that I still have this scrap of paper, though I keep all your correspondence. If the fire had been lit when I found it, however, I'm sure I would have thrown the paper in it. Here I was, half convinced that we were married in truth, and here you were, leaving without a proper letter, when we had little enough time together already. 

You could have written me on the road. You could have delayed your trip until my return and taken me with you. You could have signed your letter with your love, and even that would have placated me. But you didn't, and it was foolish of me to expect you to. 

Your first lesson to me was patience, and that patience rears its head even at the most inopportune times. You were gone a month, and in that time my anger did not waver. You returned to find me sullen and tight-lipped, and for a span of three days we existed in an icy silence, neither of us willing to break. And, wonder of wonders, this time it was you who cracked first. 

"Alyosha," you said after dinner on the third day. I looked up from my food. "Are you--all right?"

"I'm fine," I replied neutrally. I continued eating, pettiness churning in my gut. 

"If I have offended you in some way--"

I put down my fork with more force than I intended. "Why would you think that, Tutor?"

Our eyes met. You had the audacity to look stung, and your mouth worked. For a long and absurd moment, I thought that you were going to apologize. "Alyosha," you said, the sound of my name the closest to an apology that you ever got, "I thought you understood--my work is important. It will always have to come first. Not by my choice, but--"

"I thought, Tutor, that you were a man of reason. Isn't that what you're always telling me? And yet here your reason fails. If we are all of us creatures wholly separate from one another, what but your own choices could possibly be compelling you?” You looked at me in blank horror. “Say what you mean, Tutor. I am not as important as the matter you were attending to at the Archives. Don't pretend that you did not make a choice when you left. Own that choice, or tell me that you made the wrong one, but do not play the coward and act as if you were moved by forces beyond your control. We both know there is little that is beyond your control." Save, perhaps, myself.

When you spoke your voice had hardened. "Child, you are being unreasonable."

I stood up and I left, the door slamming behind me, my anger hot in my chest, tears stinging at my eyes. I was wretched, of course, that you could not be convinced, even after all this time, to put me first in your life, but more of my anger than was deserved was directed at myself. I was furious that I could not stop convincing myself that someday you would become someone else. I did not ever want you to become another person entirely, Tutor; I only wished for you to be a better version of yourself. I believe that we all of us have kindness and light buried within ourselves. That somehow I was incapable of unlocking yours was intolerable.

I had left a good deal of my things in your rooms, but I did not go back to retrieve them. I thought that perhaps then you would be forced to bring them to me, in the cold home I seldom used. Of course, as the days ticked past, growing shorter and shorter as winter approached, you did not. I was going to have to leave again soon if I was to arrive at my next posting in time. It is not that I did not want to go to you, Tutor, but my pride had finally reached its limit. It would not let me. 

A week before my departure, a messenger arrived at my door. In bored tones, she directed me to a warehouse in the south quarter of town. I knew that it was likely enough that you were behind it, and yet my curiosity compelled me to go, despite the anger still festering underneath my skin. A calculated choice on your part, I can only assume.

I expected to find you, when I opened to the door to that warehouse. What I did not expect to find were the shelves and shelves of books, carefully arranged, spines bright in the dim room. 

They were not the sort of texts that you treasured. They were ancient histories of the church, tomes recounting Hieron’s earliest days, when the gods still walked among us. The kind of books you would often dismiss as fairy tales, as if those sorts of stories do not tell us much about the world.

The letter on the desk in the center of the room told me that it was mine, to do with as I liked. The things you would do, Tutor, rather than ever say that you were sorry. But after I passed the afternoon reading in the armchair you had settled into the corner of that room, I went back to your apartments, a basket of bread tucked under my arm, along with a package of salt and a bottle of wine. Bread and salt and wine. The basest ingredients of hospitality, of community. Superstitious on my part, probably. But I did not see how it could hurt.

You opened the door cautiously, like an animal unsure whether it was hunter or prey. I admit that I prolonged your anguish, just a bit--I entered silently and set the things on the table, arranging them just so, before I turned back to you and spoke. “Thank you for the gift, Tutor,” I said. “Do you have anything else to add?” I leaned back against the table and watched you struggle with your words. You write so eloquently, Tutor, when you have had time to prepare your arguments and shore up your defenses. When they are taken away, when you are forced into honesty, you have always had a tendency to flounder. 

I reached out a hand to you, and for once you accepted the help. You came to me and let me tuck your head under my chin, so that you could speak into my throat and not meet my eyes.

"My work does not mean anything in your absence. You are--you give meaning to the world, Alyosha.” A hitch in your breath. “It is not a lesson I will soon forget." 

I accepted the apology of your heart, even if you would not give it words. I pressed my lips to your forehead, and I forgave you, Tutor, one last time. I knew better by then. But I was selfish. I wanted to pretend that it would be okay.

-

I wish I could write a sanitized version of this account. One which removes all the ugly parts, the aspects of myself and of you that I dislike. And oh, Tutor, for all my ardor, you know as I well as I how infuriating you can be. I cannot imagine a world in which we fought less often or less fiercely.

I do, often, imagine a world in which the manner of our last parting was different. In which we did not part at all. I imagine it every night, as I stare up at my ceiling or up at the stars, winking and bright. 

I imagine so many other worlds. But I never imagine the one in which you and I never met, in which your studies carried you elsewhere. I might be happier. I would never know what joy and sorrow I had lost.

Time continued to move, inexorable, and we frayed the way that fabric does under too many washings. What we had was soft and comfortable, but the knowledge that it would not last lingered at the edges. 

Eventually, I received a letter letting me know of my father’s passing, of the dissolution of the community he had so carefully held together when he raised me. An old wound now, scarred over, but back then it nearly broke me.

I thought, uselessly, of the wedding he had never attended, and I paid your lack of trust in me back. I would not tell you why I was crying, when you found me distraught in your kitchen, though I knew it only hurt us both. But I wanted to be able to keep something from you. So that you would know how it felt, when I could not assuage your pain, when you would not let me even try.

After that, I think, is when I realized the precariousness of our position. I did not want to let you make me cruel. I finally realized that it was a possibility. That perhaps the things we brought out in each other were not always for the best.

I never got my wish of an uninterrupted year with you. My time in Velas came to an end. I was to begin my rounds traveling once again. And anyway, you had been speaking of moving back to Rosemerrow for months.

“It seems it is not in your lord’s design to keep us together,” you commented, when I told you that I would be leaving soon.

“Or in yours,” I responded, without bite. We understood each other by then. The chasm that would always remain between us. Or at least I thought that we did. The nights ticked by, and I tried to treasure these last slivers of time with you, but you were always distracted. I thought I would have to force the issue once again, and I did not look forward to it.

But finally, you brought it up first. You came to me in my empty rooms, where I had been moving my things before packing them into trunks, and you sat me down at my small table. 

“Alyosha,” you said. “Do you remember what I told you of the university?”

I nodded. I felt us, once again, on the edge of a precipice.

You looked down at the table. I reached out to clasp your hands in mine, and you let me. And you told me, finally, about the Heat and the Dark. About your work. About the thing that lurked at the edges of your dreams and frightened you so.

“Tutor,” I said, when you had exhausted your store of words, stroking my thumb over the back of your hand, “why didn’t you tell me?” 

“I almost regret telling you now,” you said. “This knowledge is not a burden I enjoy, and yet--”

“And yet you believe you are the only one who can stop it.”

You looked up at me sharply. “I _am_ the only one who can stop it. Who else?”

“Then why tell me at all?” I demanded. “What finally changed your mind, if you do not want my help?”

“I thought that you deserved to know,” you said. Voice raw with your honesty. “And I want you to come with me. To Rosemerrow. I have business there. People whose help I must secure.”

“You know that I have my own duties, Tutor.”

“And what use are they? This is bigger than any of that, Alyosha.”

“Bigger than my life?” I was nearly shouting. You looked at me blankly. “No matter what end is coming, Tutor, I still have to live. And so do you.”

You told me that I needn't call you Tutor any longer. When I spoke it, you waved the name away as if it were a pesky insect. "I am no longer something so small as a teacher now. There is no point anymore. I will be something much greater, as I must."

My chest has never felt heavier than it did in that moment. All my worst fears for you, for us, finally realized. "But you will always be my Tutor," I said, my voice growing small. "You will always be the man who met me when I was young and foolish, and saw what I could become."

You put your hand to my cheek. It was only then that I realized I was crying. "Alyosha--with what's coming--" You stopped, and took in a great gulp of air. It sounded like you were choking. "I have to focus on what's important. On my own studies. On the few avenues of inquiry that might save us all."

"And you'll do that alone, will you?"

You stroked my cheekbone with your thumb. I did not meet your eyes. "I hope that you will join me."

"But you think that you alone will be the one to stop this. Tutor, don't you see--what we need now is numbers. We must gather together the remains of the old university, the highest echelons of the church, the government of every city--alone, just as ourselves, there is little we can do to stop such a grave calamity. But if every part of Hieron came together, there is nothing that we could not accomplish."

The look you gave me then was a very sad one. "I am sorry, Alyosha. I cannot let your naivety cloud my judgment. Not in this." 

I have often wondered, Tutor, when it was you learned to be so cruel. It was long before I met you, although in our years together I often enough became the recipient of your sharpness. The way you handled words as some handle a knife, turning them just so. Cutting deep. 

“I have found a way--a place that we may each go, for a time. A study. A place to ourselves where we might have all the time in the world to find a solution. Please let me take you to one. Please.” And now you were crying too.

“And there I will be alone?” You nodded. I laughed, ugly. “I can’t. You must know that I can’t. That is not the path He has laid out for me, to while away my time in some study, safe in a way that the rest of Hieron is not.”

You turned away. You were looking not at me but at my small collection of trinkets, which I had left laid out on a shelf.

"What are you thinking?" I asked. My voice trembled. "About how useless they all are? That their prettiness will not save anything? That they are nothing but a waste of space and attention?"

You turned your eyes back to me. "I was thinking," you said, "that there are many beautiful things that I wish to save. But there is so little time, Alyosha. I cannot bear the thought of--please, reconsider."

"No, Tutor," I said. I did not know when I had learned to sound so weary. You make me tired. Sometimes talking to you is like picking my way through an unfamiliar forest, finding new and exciting paths everywhere I turn--but sometimes instead it is like finding dead end after dead end, becoming endlessly lost.

“Then there is nothing left to say.” You stood. I watched you with my heart heavy against my ribs.

My voice was quiet when I spoke. “You will still write,” I asked, “won’t you?”

“Of course,” you said, pausing at the threshold of my home, the door half open. Looking back at me, your profile was obscured by the sun. “When I have the time. I always will.”

I don’t know why I’m surprised that that, too, was a lie.

-

That was the last time we ever lived in the same place. The last time we ever shared the same home. The last time we ever ate a meal together. I wrote to you sometimes of my studies, tempting you with arguments so that you might respond faster. And every now and then your letters would plead with me again, to let you whisk me away.

My answer was always the same. I am sorry, Tutor. It will never change.

I thought of you often. I thought of you when I woke up and found that the sun had disappeared. When I worried for just a moment that it was your doing. 

I had a plate once, Tutor. Not a particularly useful one; it was glazed in blues and greens, and every time I looked at it I was reminded of the ocean, of the calling of the gulls in my ears. I never used it, for fear of destroying its beauty. But one day I came home angry--you and I had fought--and I threw my bag down, and something about the disturbance it created caused the plate to roll off of its shelf, cracking in two on the floor. 

I wanted to take what was left of it and throw it at the wall. I wanted to shatter it to powder, until there was nothing left to remind me how beautiful it had once been. I wanted to blame you, though of course this, at least, was not your fault at all.

I didn't. I gathered up the two shards and I put them back on the shelf, broken twins, and in time I learned to appreciate their new kind of beauty as well. I always meant to see if I could fix them. I never did find the time. I wonder sometimes if we are like that, Tutor; broken in an unwise moment of anger, and fixable--if only either of us made the time. 

Not everything can be mended, I know. That was a lesson the prelate who raised me often tried to teach me, when I would pore over old shirts with a needle and thread, determined that we would not need new ones. But I never did learn it. I could never leave those shirts unmended, and though I sometimes thought about it I could never leave your letters unanswered, either. And even once you stopped writing to me, I kept sending letters, fruitlessly, because I knew there was a possibility that you still read them. That they might bring a spark of joy to your life, when everything else that surrounds you is so bleak. 

I hope that they did bring you joy. You must have made time to read them, after all. You came, when I wrote to you on Hadrian's behalf.

I gave Hadrian comfort on that hill, after he let you lead him into folly, and then I turned my eyes to yours. 

I saw determination in your eyes, Tutor. Determination and sorrow and stubbornness, but I did not see what I was truly looking for.

Is it so much to ask that you regret the way things ended between us as fiercely as I do?

But perhaps it is. I don't think that you are a creature capable of regret. So I suppose I will have to hold onto enough for the both of us.

Part of me hopes that you will never see this great indulgence of mine, and an equal part of me hopes that you do. Am I writing for you, or for myself, or for those who will come after us? Do I have some vain desire that others might learn from our folly?

Perhaps I am only praying. It is sometimes all I know how to do.

And my greatest hope, one that in all our many years together I have never been able to let go of: I do hope, Tutor, that we see each other again, whether that day comes bearing sorrow or laughter or tears. What I have discovered, writing this account, is that I treasure even our worst moments. And in the uncertainty of our meetings there is a kind of beauty, the kind that comes with each dawning of His sun. 

So in the absence of His sun, I will look forward instead to the day when I will see you again. I pray that it will be a bright one.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on twitter or tumblr as luckydicekirby, if you're sad about arrell and alyosha please @ me


End file.
